New Girl
by storm-aurora
Summary: Whitley is a new girl at a new school that she didn't even want to go to in the first place. Nothing goes right for her on the first day, so she doesn't have much hope for the second. Why couldn't it be easier to make friends?


**A/N: ****Happy birthday, Whitley! I actually wrote this for her birthday last year, but only posted it on Tumblr - I wanted to revise and expand it before posting it here, but I just never got around to it. With a new year comes new anxieties about making friends, so it was a little therapeutic for me to come back to this piece. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!**

It had been a disastrous first day for Whitley.

She had only just introduced herself to the class when the teacher, Mr. Cheren, announced that the class would be having a Pokémon battle tournament. Logically, she knew that she would inevitably have to fight in a Pokémon battle at the Trainers' School, no matter how much she didn't want to force Foongy to fight – or watch other Trainers doing the same to their Pokémon. But to have to battle on her first day? And _multiple times_, no less? That was just her rotten luck.

Whitley hadn't been trying very hard in her first two battles, but it turned out that she didn't need to. Her first two opponents weren't very focused on the battle, and Foongy was able to defeat their Pokémon with a single attack each. Then, her final opponent had been relying on an advanced strategy to use Sigilyph's Psycho Shift to pass off the badly poisoned status condition to the opposing Pokémon. However, Foongy's immunity to being poisoned threw her off her game, and Whitley got a weird thrill of excitement by accidentally outsmarting her opponent and she forgot to try to lose.

So, she'd won the girls' tournament, and her prize? A _Pokédex_. As if learning to be a Pokémon Trainer wasn't bad enough, now she was tasked with filling the device that was the epitome of everything that N stood against. That persistent, smooth-talking boy Blake pressured her into accepting the thing, and now she had been roped into helping with a project that she wanted nothing to do with. Her only consolation was that it didn't seem like her classmates resented her for winning the tournament…yet. Whitley was sure it was only a matter of time before the girls got jealous about being shown up by the new girl.

But even if they didn't resent her, would they actually want to be friends with her? Having spent most of her life growing up in Team Plasma, Whitley didn't have much experience with making friends. She had been hoping that she could befriend her roommate and have her introduce her to new people. Unfortunately, she'd been given a single room. While it was nice to be able to display her old Team Plasma uniform freely, that came at the cost of her easiest plan to make a new friend – and her only plan to make a friend on her first day. Now she was going to face her first full day of classes all alone, with a class full of girls who may or may not hate her.

She was _so _not looking forward to tomorrow.

* * *

Tomorrow came too quickly for Whitley's liking, and along with it their first class of the day: status condition studies in the lab with Mr. Otoha. Whitley made sure to arrive early so she could have her choice of seating and made a beeline for a lab table at the back of the classroom. Hopefully, she could avoid unwanted attention from yesterday's catastrophe back here.

Unfortunately, lying low didn't go too well. As more students filtered into the classroom, one girl looked straight at Whitley and headed towards her. Whitley ducked her head and pretended to be immensely interested in the schedule on her lab table, hoping the girl would ignore her. It didn't work.

"Hey! Whitley, right?"

Whitley slowly drew her head up and made eye contact with the girl, who had sat down at the lab table in front of Whitley and turned around to face her. She was blonde and had her hair in a ponytail, and she wore a blue visor with a blue-and-white T-shirt. All in all, Whitley judged her to be the sporty, athletic type.

"Um…yeah," Whitley said in response to her question.

"Cool! I just wanted to say congrats on winning the tournament yesterday," the girl said, grinning widely. "I'm Yuki, by the way. Nice to meet you!"

"Um, nice to meet you too," Whitley replied.

"Hey, so I was wondering, do you want to have lunch with me and my friends today?" Yuki asked.

"I, um…what?" Whitley stammered. A free invitation to hang out with her new classmates? It was the perfect opportunity to make friends, and yet it was so sudden. It seemed almost too good to be true.

Before Yuki could respond, another girl approached them from behind. "Yuki, you're in my seat," the girl said, folding her arms crossly. She had short brown hair and wore a white wrap shirt, and Whitley recognized her as her final opponent from the previous day's tournament.

Yuki rolled her eyes. "There aren't assigned seats yet, Ellie," she said. Then she turned her attention back to Whitley. "So, what do you say? Lunch or nah?"

Whitley blinked a couple of times, but eventually nodded. It was exactly what she'd wanted – an easy way to make friends. "Great! Meet me in the caf. I'll introduce you to the rest of the girls there."

Yuki turned back around in her seat for a moment before standing up and heading up the aisle. The girl who had approached Yuki – and who was now wearing a scowl on her face – turned and dropped her things on the other stool at Whitley's lab table. "Just because it's a new term doesn't mean we _have _to get new seats," she grumbled, taking a folder and a pencil out of her backpack. She put the rest of her things on the floor beside her, took a seat on the stool, and finally turned her attention to Whitley.

To Whitley's surprise, the girl was actually smiling now. "Hey. I'm Ellie," she said. "Mind being lab partners for the foreseeable future?"

"Um," Whitley said eloquently. She glanced across the room to where Yuki was enthusiastically hugging a girl who had just entered the classroom. Ellie followed her gaze and winced.

"Okay, so maybe I didn't make the greatest first impression. I'm not a mean person, I swear," Ellie said. "Yuki and I just…don't get along too well. She and her friends are shallow, and they don't take battling seriously at all."

_That doesn't sound so bad_, Whitley thought. Out loud, all she said was, "Oh."

Ellie pursed her lips. "So…is that a no on the lab partner thing?"

"What? No, no, it's fine," Whitley stammered, mustering up a small smile at the other girl. "Um, we can be lab partners."

"Cool, cool," Ellie said, nodding her head. She looked back at the front of the classroom and started rapping her fingers on the lab table, and Whitley couldn't tell if she had something else on her mind or if she really got bored that quickly. Then she turned back to look at Whitley. "Hey, why don't you have lunch with me instead?"

"I-I'm sorry?"

"Instead of eating with Yuki and her friends," Ellie said quickly. "I eat in the library; It's much quieter than the cafeteria. It's right across from it. You can't miss it." She shrugged. "If you don't want to, that's fine. But…I just thought I'd throw the option out there."

Whitley nodded slowly as Ellie turned back to the front of the classroom. She couldn't believe her luck now – in the span of just a few minutes, two different people invited her to have lunch with them. Maybe she was wrong to think that her peers would resent her for winning the tournament. So now she was faced with a different problem: which invitation should she accept?

Ellie obviously didn't hold Yuki and her friends in high esteem. And spending more time with her would give her the chance to know her lab partner a bit better. But the descriptors of them that Ellie gave – "shallow" and "don't take battling seriously at all" – seemed kind of comforting to Whitley. In fact, Ellie's opinion of them reminded her of a comment she'd overheard one of the guys making…she didn't know his name, but he had spiky blue hair. If he and Ellie were friends, maybe she didn't want to hang out with Ellie – the spiky-haired boy was kinda intimidating.

However, Ellie hadn't said anything about eating with friends. If it was just the two of them, she would be able to get pretty close with Ellie. She didn't know how many friends Yuki would have, but if she was an athlete, she would probably have a lot. Whitley might get introduced to everyone, but it was unlikely that she'd be able to get a word in among a big group of girls.

In the end, when lunch period rolled around, Whitley headed to the library. Ellie was waiting for her by the entrance, and she had a big smile on her face when Whitley saw her. "You came!" she said eagerly.

Whitley bit her lip and looked at the ground. "Yes, but…" Ellie's grin faded. "I just wanted to thank you for the invitation," she said, fighting the instinct to turn tail and run out of the awkward situation. "I'm grateful that you thought of me, but…I think I'm going to sit with Yuki and the others today. It's nothing against you!" she added quickly.

Ellie sighed. "I get it," she said, pressing her lips together. "No, really, I do. You're new here, and you'd rather be social with a big group of people than hang out with one other girl in the library. It'll probably be better for you in the long run." She patted Whitley on the back. "Go ahead. Enjoy your lunch."

"I'm sorry…"

"No, seriously. It's okay. You do you, girl."

"Maybe another day?"

"Maybe another day," Ellie echoed, cracking a little smile. She waved goodbye as Whitley exited the library and began looking for Yuki.

Eventually, it was Yuki who found Whitley – she called her name and waved her over to a table in the center of the cafeteria. Whitley hurried over to the table and was surprised to find it occupied by only three other girls. One was Yuki, obviously, and the other two were girls that Whitley remembered seeing around Yuki before. The smaller of the two girls had reddish-brown hair that she pulled into a small ponytail on the top of her head, styled in such a way that it looked like a sprout. The other had light brown hair a little shorter than Ellie's, and she smelled strongly of Honey.

"Hey! You made it!" Yuki exclaimed as Whitley sat down. "Did you get lost or something?"

"Um, something like that."

"Hi! I'm Yuko!" the sprout-haired girl exclaimed, sticking out her hand for Whitley to shake. "Nice to meet you!"

"And I'm Maya," the Honey-scented girl said.

"It's good to meet you all," Whitley said politely.

"Okay, first off, can I just say that I am _sooo _jealous that you got to hold Blake's hand when you were getting your Pokédex yesterday?" Yuko said.

"I wish he would hold my hand like that!" Yuki exclaimed. "And look into my eyes, and say my name in that _dreamy _way of his, and tell me he loves me…"

"Oh, Yuki, we all know that if he's gonna do that to anyone, it'll be you," Maya assured her.

"Of course," Yuki declared. "Maybe he'll do it on our field trip next week!"

"Ooh, that's right, I totally forgot about the field trip!" Yuko said. "Did they ever announce where we're gonna go?"

"Nope, they want it to be a surprise," Yuki said. "I'm hoping we'll go to Join Avenue again. There are so many cute shops there…have you ever been, Whitley?"

Whitley blinked. "Um, no, I haven't," she said.

"We have to take you there sometime!" Yuki declared. "My favorite shop is the salon. I bring Wingull there for a grooming every month."

"I haven't been since my birthday," Maya said.

Whitley boldly jumped into the conversation. "When is your birthday, Maya?" she asked.

"June twenty-fourth," Maya chuckled. "When is yours?"

"Yeah, when is your birthday, Whitley?" Yuko asked.

"September sixteenth," Whitley answered.

"Wow, that's really soon!" Yuko exclaimed. "We've gotta get started on getting you presents!"

"Oh, that's really not necessary…"

"Of course it is," Yuki asserted. "We're your friends, and friends get each other presents."

Whitley's eyes widened a little. "We're…friends?"

"Yes, we're friends, silly," Yuko laughed. "You're not a jerk, and you agreed to have lunch with us. What more do we need?"

"I…I just, um…"

"You weren't expecting to make friends this quickly?" Yuki guessed. "The three of us, we've all been there. We were all the new girl at one point or another. I spent my first year at the Striation City Trainers' School, but then we moved, and my parents decided to send me here instead."

"I moved here from Johto four years ago," Yuko said.

"And I just came here last year," Maya said.

"We know how it feels to be the new girl, so we want to make the experience better for you," Yuki finished.

Whitley felt a little overwhelmed by the three girls' kindness, and she felt tears start to well up in her eyes.

"Huh? Whitley, what's wrong?" Maya asked worriedly.

"N-nothing's wrong," Whitley sniffled, attempting to dry her eyes. "Nothing's wrong at all…"

"Then why are you crying?"

"Because…because…thank you. Thank you so much…"

_Thank you for wanting to be friends with the new girl._

**A/N: Reviews and favorites are always appreciated! 3**


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